 Coming up on DTNS Google polls podcast addict from the play store a Samsung funded startup developed a fake window with natural sunlight And Aunt Pruitt explains mirrorless cameras in advance of the Canon R5 mirrorless body This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, May 18th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Ling And I'm the shows producer Roger Chang as I just mentioned Aunt Pruitt host at twit of hands-on photography and hands-on wellness joins us. Good to have you back, Amp Thank you for having me source team. I really appreciate y'all Thank you. We appreciate you being here. We were just talking with aunt about collecting couches Rogers not me. We were talking with aunt about Rogers collecting Get that wider conversation and understand the truth a good day internet patreon.com slash DTNS Let's start with a few tech things you should know Uber is closing 45 offices laying off through 300 3000 rather employees and rethinking its freight and autonomous vehicle technology Uber said it's laid off 3700 employees earlier this month Uber rides are down to 80% while Uber eats delivery food delivery is up 52% Amazon will reopen its French warehouses Tuesday If you remember Amazon closed down the French warehouses about a month ago after a court ordered it to reduce Operations in response to union complaints as part of its agreement with three unions Amazon will slowly bring workers back in Starting with 30% Tuesday reaching full staff by June 2nd Microsoft announced that minecraft sales surpassed 200 million with 126 million monthly players the company said that new players increased 25% last month while multiplayer sessions increased 40% during that time Microsoft acquired minecraft maker Mojang back in 2014 for 2.5 billion dollars and reported 100 million in sales in 2016 Developers of the Edison email app confirmed a bug that caused iOS users to see email messages from other accounts Without needing their credentials Company said it was not a security breach and appeared only in the latest update to the iOS app In other words, they're saying it wasn't a hacker who did it They're saying it was a bug and it has since been rolled back at us instead affected users were notified of the bug Logitech announced its update to its security camera line with the circle view which features a redesigned IP64 rated body and operates only through Apple's home kit like Logitech's circle 2 camera The circle view can record 1080p video across a 180-degree field of view with infrared footage at night up to 15 feet away The circle view is powered through USB and includes a button to off the camera and microphone The circle view goes on sale later in May for $160 Anika Asian review source says chip maker TSMC stopped taking new orders from Huawei in order to comply with new Export rules from the United States TSMC called the report purely market rumor But did say it's working with outside counsel to interpret the new US rules US under secretary for economic growth Keith croc Said the US does not anticipate giving TSMC a license to sell to Huawei at Huawei's annual analyst summit Huawei rotating chairman Kuoping said we expect that our business will be inevitably affected Huawei's other options outside of TSMC for making chips include China's SMIC or perhaps Samsung Butterfly network has developed a diagnostic wand with an ultrasonic chip inside that can connect to an Android or iOS device to monitor COVID-19 patients lungs remotely The $2,000 wand could be used by patients at home while doctors interpret the scans and results are comparable to mid-range $70,000 ultra saw ultrasound machines Google's meat video conference service became free earlier this month and has now passed the 50 million install mark in the Google Play Store By comparison it had 5 million installs back in March and Insurance dispute in Cullen County District Court in Texas Monday picked a jury to hear the case by video conference Officials believe that this is the first virtual trial jury trial to be held in the US during the lockdown The jury will be will hear a Summary jury trial a condensed version of a case where results in a non-binding verdict to encourage mediation and the FBI announced it has unlocked an iPhone 5 and iPhone 7 plus of a shooter in Pensacola, Florida Without apples and systems or breaking encryption the FBI says it developed its own tool to unlock the phones. They did not Tell what method they used to get them open All right, let's talk a little bit about a singular moment in time Sarah Let's During an MIT event Microsoft president Brad Smith, perhaps you've heard of him said that quote Microsoft was on the wrong side of history when open source Exploded at the beginning of the century and I can say that about me personally He was talking about himself Smith has been a lawyer at Microsoft for more than 25 years Microsoft is now the single largest contributor to open source projects in the world a full Linux kernel will ship in a Windows 10 update later this month Man and I don't know about you, but I just called 1998 me and I didn't believe myself when I told myself this had happened No one would have seen this coming back in not a soul Yeah, there's really not much to say here other than like yeah, you were But but also good good for acknowledging it I mean Brad Smith was a lawyer on a lot of those cases where Microsoft was suing open source companies trying to prevent them from Being able to operate by by throwing patent law around in what a lot of people felt was was just an anti-competitive Sort of matter and my how things have changed A lot of it has to do with such an Adele coming in and changing the philosophy of the company But some of it was even changing before that even under Steve Palmer. So we're seeing just a few less GNU pitchforks Yeah, I wonder how many there's always something that Microsoft as big as they are is going to do to annoy people But yeah, I think overall you're right if you were pitchforks because Microsoft is participating there They're not only participating in in Linux projects They're participating in the chromium project and all kinds there's there's loads of examples of other projects and by and large Not that they're perfect, but generally it seems like they're being a good citizen in the projects that they are participating in Podcast addict says its app has been pulled from the Google Play Store and had its ad serving suspended For violating rules about COVID-19 if you remember we talked about this before the Play Store policies now prohibit Referencing COVID-19 or related terms in metadata unless your app is from an authorized government or health agency This is to crack down on fake apps that are that are spreading this information Podcast addict is not a misinformation app. It's an app that just delivers podcasts It is probably being punished for having Podcasts listed in the app that mentioned COVID-19, but we're not sure Podcast addict is making its APK available for side load while it tries to appeal this decision Which creator Xavier Guillemond says we'll take up to seven days and he's gonna be missing out on revenue every one of those days It's not a first either podcast addict was previously demonetized for Acute being accused of linking to podcast with explicit content But again, they were just linking to the podcast that people linked to Some of which had explicit content in that case Google reversed the course on the decision rather quickly We're waiting to see if Google will pay attention to this and reverse course on this faster as well Is this more of a Google AI? Mess up if you will where it's just sort of scraping and looking and thinking Probably argued that yeah, it's like why are we still getting targeted? I mean if if we're not being targeted explicitly because you know of the company that we are this wouldn't be the first time Yeah, it does sound like an algorithm, we don't know that but it does sound like an algorithm just looked at this app and yanked it down They got an automated notice that said you're in violation of this policy It was the COVID-19 policy So they were very specific about what the violation they were accused of was but not specific about what in the app Caused this to be the problem now if they were to follow normal policy, they would have to change the name of the app resubmit it Without violating the policy which would lose podcast addict all of its play store history It's had my download count all of that which would and branding right which would be devastating So one would think that I can't imagine anything the podcast addict was doing would Would justify that kind of punishment at worst. Maybe they had COVID-19 in their meta tags and shouldn't have You know, but even that I think would be just just take the meta tags out And we'll put the we'll put the app back up. You shouldn't be banned for life for that but if they're serving up podcasts that are Providing great content around COVID-19 information. Yeah, yeah They're doing a good service and those different podcasts They have to set themselves up with SEO information with For us their tags and so forth because that's the right thing to do to make sure that they're seen by everyone So again, all of this just sort of confused me. It just sounds like yet another Algorithm problem, you know, well and and to your point like was this just an AI issue Maybe it was at what point can a company, you know, like a Podcast addict be like you just We we lost out on a lot of revenue because of some issue that happened You know behind the scenes that you're not telling us about And a podcast addict isn't big enough to get the same treatment Spotify would get There's not a there's not a personal representative that goes well, hold on a minute We don't want that to happen. Let's let's talk this out So they're they're having to wait for the press to mention this and get Google's attention, which is unfair To podcast addict and hopefully by the time you hear this recording if you're not listening to it live This has been resolved and we'll follow up and talk about it if and when it is Oculus Quest will now bring its experimental hand tracking system out of beta up until now A hand tracking has only worked for the main menu and some built-in apps the games waltz of the wizard Eluxer and the curious tale of the stolen pets as well as animated films gloomy eyes and the lion will launch with hand tracking on May 28th Developers can start submitting apps with hand tracking that day as well So you're gonna start see more of the stuff. Yay. Very excited because I have an Oculus Quest other updates to the quest include PlayStation scan Which helps automatically detect obstacles and the ability to change the default boundary color Facebook says that it sold $100 million of Oculus Quest content since launch of last year that matches the $100 million across all of its VR platforms announced last September So play space scan to help make sure, you know, you've got a nice mauve boundary line for you or or or the or the cool or that the tracking the hand tracking which is most exciting to you, Sara I would I don't know um I Don't know. I I it's probably the hand tracking. Um, I I I don't I don't dislike What options I have now, but it is Pretty limiting it is limiting You know what what your hands can do and what you have to sort of like I don't know you have to sort of learn how to use your hands a very different way in order to like Enjoy the Oculus Quest, which is fine, but it isn't it's never felt Like it is I don't know it because you're having to hold those controllers, right? So it's just is it unnatural? Yeah You sort of it's sort of like being able to be like, okay, you can use your hands, but you can only use your thumbs You know, so it's it's it's not wrong. It's it's fine. It's learnable, but it always felt a little limiting to me, so I Always thought that they were doing a great job putting out a product That's not half baked the way Google tends to do it But this all of these updates sound really good and and I would have opted more for the Detecting the obstacle feature because I'm tired of stuff getting broken in my house because I'm stumbling over it and things like that Well, yeah, and that that play space scan. I mean the beauty of is it makes it easier I mean you can still manually set up that space and try to make sure you're not kicking things around But busting a shin and the more it's a pain the more you're gonna miss something, right? So it's good to have that stuff Samsung has spun out a startup from its C labs incubator that makes an artificial window that delivers the benefits of natural sunlight It's called sunny five and it outputs the full spectrum of natural light And can be programmed to mimic sunlight by changing the angle throughout the day Including programmable scenarios like sunrise dawn dusk and sunset This will be great on the colony ships We take when we leave earth and travel through the space Samsung claims the product can even help users synthesize vitamin D indoors without the negative effects of sunburge Sunburn or aging now that's a claim that has not been validated, but it'd be interesting if it's true It's controlled by an app, of course, and it integrates with Samsung's smart things, of course because it's incubated by Samsung The startup will launch soon as an independent. So right now it's been in the C labs incubator The news is it's going to be spun out as its own Samsung backed company and hopefully we'll we'll get to see some actual products Rather than just the prototypes and demonstrations They were showing off a previous version of this at CES, but what they've got now looks cool in a video There's a lot yet that has to be proven in real life, but it looks interesting I mean, I think that you know a lot of these sorts of things people go Oh cool vitamin D great for humans I was just having a conversation with a friend earlier today about the fact that his plant was dying And he didn't know what he was doing wrong and so we're like looking at photos And I was like, I don't know maybe you need to like put it in a different corner kind of thing I think that the artificial lights You know humans aside There are lots of of ways that this could be very cool And that's pretty much the only Positive I see in this is something for helping to keep plants alive in the home when you have issues with actual Natural light, but from a human standpoint We need we need to go outside. We need to go outside in the air Even though there's a bunch of creepy crawlies flying around and stuff out there But that's that's what helps brings balance and keep balance in the force if you will You know, we got to have all of that feel then some of that energy from the Sun to help us stay in that state of Homeostasis. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's that's the right term I mean people have a vitamin D deficiency in general these days because not going out enough Certainly this might help with that but it's not gonna help with what you're saying ant Which is like there are other benefits of going outside and maybe you should just do that But when we go outside we put on sunblock and all that so I don't know There's definitely some therapeutic things for people who can't go outside This could be beneficial or like I was joking earlier, you know space travel Being able to make it more natural and in fact, you'll get if this works the way they're describing You'll get better sunlight from it than you would get through a window because it's the full spectrum Whereas your window filters things. That's why you can't just keep the sun You know the shades open and get the same amount of vitamin D. Well, and you know Over on the east coast and I don't know if you ever went through this I guess you were you were far enough south, but you know, I I know people who have You know During the winter that it's depression mode sad. Yeah Disorder that's right. So I mean, you know when when it comes down to this it's that's actually helpful Yeah, yeah, when there is no sun out Which you know and and some locations that that happens for for big stretches throughout the year So it's it could be good for that as well. That's a really good point. Yeah In a letter to customers Apple retail chief Deirdre O'Brien announced that Apple has now reopened 100 retail locations globally with plans to open up 10 more stores in Italy and 25 more in the United States this week Reopened stores perform temperature checks on employees require face masks for employees and customers Limit occupancy to maintain social distance and are deep-cleaned nightly. Some stores will also offer curbside pickup and drop-off. So How does everybody feel about this? Are they doing the right thing? Are they are they taking the right precautions? Are you ready to go back when a store opens near you? I Have no problem with this I'm not an Apple customer by any stretch of the imagination But I have no problem with this because they're getting people back to work and Apple is paying attention to detail from a Standpoint of safety and trying to keep everybody, you know, healthy and whatnot. That's good And they even gonna, you know, keep a lot of people out of the store if they need to the same way our regular Supermarkets are doing I think this is a good thing Yeah, it seems like these are the right precautions They're even going to provide masks if someone shows up without one for some reason They'll have them on hand for folks. So they're they're trying to make it as seamless as possible Same token. I never like having to go to the store if I don't have to anyway So this this may not be the reason that I'm not gonna go But I'm not gonna be rushing back to this or or a lot of other stores if I can get stuff online But that also was true in February for me So it's just you know, I didn't like the hassle of having to go park and all of that. What about you Sarah? I mean, honestly, like listen, I love a good Apple store And I am an Apple customer, you know, I'm However, this is such a great example of like, oh if they just went away forever. Does my life change? Nope Doesn't in fact, it was like kind of inconvenient for me to go to an Apple store as it was Not inconvenient for me to buy something online Now they talk about this curbside service service offering I wonder how that's gonna go because People by nature are not very patient and then from from what I've always been told is the whole appointment Aspect of Apple store seems to be a bit of a hurdle to try to clear So now you're gonna add curbside assistance meaning someone's got to be at point a on time And then the Apple representative has to get there on time in addition to dealing with other stuff on the inside It just sounds like a Charlie Foxtrot weight. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It does I well, unless it's just You order it for pickup and instead of going into the store to pick it up You just say like, oh, I'm here to pick up my thing rather than having an appointment If it's sort of first come first serve and they're like, okay Great, we'll bring it out to you because I mean I've done that at the Apple store Where I order something and pick it up there and the only difference back then was I would walk into the store and tell Somebody and wait at a table here. They probably just say, oh, just wait here for a second We'll be right back. Well, we'll probably not change is I will wait 20 minutes Because this is gonna be busy even if they're especially if they're limiting the number of people who can go into the store Right. Hey folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines calm Well, we couldn't have an prude on the show without taking advantage of his wealth of photography knowledge the biggest thing I think you were saying on your radar ant is the r5 mirrorless body from cannon coming out. All right. Oh, yeah, definitely I know you're eager to see it. See if it follows the pattern of Taken heat and then getting a firmware update and get some love Before we get to your thoughts on the r5 specifically though Talked to us a little bit about mirrorless cameras How how is that different from a digital SLR? Talk to you about mirrorless cameras specifically me. Yeah. Yeah, all right Well mirrorless cameras are Essentially exactly as it says it's a camera body that does not have a mirror in it That helps out with the actual exposure our traditional digital SLRs have a flip-up mirror that pops up and down every time you click the shutter Light passes through and closes back down so on and so forth. This is a bunch of mechanical mumble jumbo You just remove that in the mirrorless bodies and it allows you to shrink the the actual form factor of the body down In addition to that physical form factor change and you get some added benefits such as an electronic Viewfinder instead of looking through your viewfinder and it's just glass And it's just the optics that you're dealing with to see if you're in frame and so forth with the mirrorless side They're able to computerize it a bit and let you see if you're properly exposed If you're under exposed and see a lot of other beautiful stuff really dumb question Why weren't we always dealing with mirrorless cameras this entire time? Well, there is a cost to these things. I mean that happens over time, but of course now The process is getting a lot less a lot less cumbersome for these different manufacturers So the cost of mirrorless are going down for the most part with the exception of you know, the latest one from Sony and this rumored one to our fire from Canon Supposed to be pretty expensive But I doubt it's going to be pretty expensive because they already have a $6,000 camera body out there They're not gonna do us like that again, you know Why is there such big interest in shooting video with the LSR or or with mirrorless cameras? Oh Portability portability you have a lot of independent filmmakers that Yeah, they would love to have that red red weapon the beautiful cinema camera and or the Ursa from black magic But the form factor on those are a little bit chunkier and heavier and not as easy to move around with But you know, that's one of those prices you pay for when it comes to having quality over convenience But if you can put those same types of smarts into a smaller form factor and give it in a nice price point That's something that the independent folks are going to jump on quickly All right, so I get I get it Mirrorless cameras allowed you to do some direct digital stuff that you couldn't do if there was a mirror in the way And it's now gotten cheap enough that it's it's not a big cost prohibitive thing We've had a couple of of of cannon ours as I was mentioning earlier that you were saying Have gone through the love hate relationship. Oh, well hate it those things when they came out and it drove Oh, no He froze up. Oh, there was there was so much I'm such a good boy too. Yeah, it was uh, I It doesn't pick up in a second. I will say from my from what I when I could read There's a love hate relationship because there's a love and hate relationship with a lot of Photography enthusiasts for cannon. They feel that they're a little too traditional They don't move as quickly as the Sony's as the Panasonic's when it comes to adopting new technologies And they feel that they have been a little slow to adopt a lot of the features that the competitors have Oh, so and right Roger jumped in when you froze right there, but he's basically saying it's it's the it's the cannon high expectations That that feel that a little bit Yeah, and there's truth in that a lot of the Talk behind cannon is there lag behind the folks of Sony and Nikon and things like that and and in a Since they are but it's no different from Say the Apple versus Google or the Apple versus Microsoft Apple tends to wait on a lot of things and when it's time for them to to announce something or launch something it's usually a better version of the technology that Company ABC has already put out, you know, and that's just what's going on here Can it's gonna get better Sony's gonna get better two years from now And this is just gonna be a beautiful cycle for the consumer So before we wrap up here, tell us, you know, what what is the status of the r5? And and what's your best guess at what this will do with what has generally been a decline in the consumer camera market? Well, the r5 is supposed to be out this week But you know with everything going on with the virus things are slowing down I've spoken to Representatives at Canon in there, of course, they've been tight-lipped But they all tend to say the whole yeah, we're still on time. We're still on time with it getting out this month So hopefully we'll see it by the end of the month But far as just the the market for cameras changing so much You have to blame these smartphones the pixel the the iPhone 11 the cameras and these things are just outstanding From a consumer standpoint, I'm not gonna shoot everything with the pixel I can But I don't want to there are some things I want a bigger image sensor to do a particular task Is there something that you gave up with? mirrorless cameras that is akin to what you might be giving up if you switch to a phone In my opinion No, no, I think you're gaining more you're gaining more Because for me a lot of photography is based on feel that that body has to feel right in my hands versus You know carry in the phone right and a phone is comfortable in my hands, but for shooting photography I want the girth of a camera body in my hands Just what that feel solid. Yeah, gotcha. Thank you, man. I appreciate that. I feel like I understand a tiny bit more. Thanks I'm glad I It's it's are you going to get an R5 I guess that is my intent Yeah, I hope to get one as soon as it's available to me, but yeah, that's my intent I'm ready to go the the mirrorless route. I wasn't too keen on it previously But I played around with the ESR and I liked it and I said well I'll go ahead and get it and I just about got it last year But then all of these rumors popped up about this next generation coming up. So I said I better wait As it always is you can join in the conversation in our discord lots of photography conversations pop up there as well as the Larger tech conversation you can join by linking to a patreon account at patreon.com Dtns. Let's check out the mailbag. Oh, let's Jason aka husky Caucasian I guess Maybe doing some baking at home all good on last Monday's show Jason says you discussed online voting This reminded me of a project that Microsoft is working on called election guard It's still in its earliest phases of testing isn't designed for voting online just yet But I can see the potential for it to pivot in that direction It was tested earlier this year for a small election in Wisconsin the basics as described on their website are as follows election guard is a way of checking election results Checking if our election results are accurate and that votes have not been altered or suppressed or tampered in any way of Individual voters consider their vote has been accurately recorded and their voice has been correctly added to the final tally Anybody who wishes to monitor the election can check all votes to that that they have been correctly tallied to produce an accurate and fair results All right, we'll keep an eye on election guard. I've heard of a few bits about it But like you say, I've heard it's you know very early days of testing. Thank you Jason Yes, and thanks to patrons at our master and grand master levels including Wendy Hernandez de Grache Daniels and Steve Ayadarola also thanks to Aunt Pruitt for being with us today And it's been too long. Hopefully it won't be too long since you're with us again Let folks know where they can keep up with your work. Oh sweet. Thank you all so much You can follow me over on Twitter at ant underscore Pruitt But I'd love for you to check out my show hands-on photography and hands-on wellness over on the twit network That's twit.tv slash hop and Twit.tv hop twit.tv how easy easy to remember those are good. Those are good URLs Thank you, and I now everything I know about mirrorless cameras. I've learned from you I could I could I could honestly say that at this point. I can put that on my LinkedIn now. Yeah. Yeah Patron Dario Bostos wanted to share the love with one of the artists on his music label vicious technique You can find their new single you on Amazon Apple Spotify, etc Just part of us trying to help each other out during these times and we'll have a link to that in our show notes as well And of course you can always support the show directly on patreon daily tech news show comm slash patreon If you have feedback for us our email address is feedback a daily tech news show comm We'd love to hear your feedback keep it coming. We're also live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m 2030 UTC and you can find out more at daily tech news show comm slash live back tomorrow with Patrick Beja talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frog pants comm